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Saturday, November 15, 2014

Interstellar Movie Review

My take and theories about what the film was about and how it all makes sense, mostly.

By Ken Parker

I have to admit that Interstellar
looked like my type of film from the trailers. With comparisons to
2001 A Space Odyssey, one of my favorite films of all time, I
had high expectations for Interstellar. Having reservations
about the length of the film, I had confidence in Christopher Nolan's
track record with movies such as Memento, Inception,
The Prestige, Insomnia and The Dark Knight.
Going into the movie with high expectations is not always a good
thing.

The following review has spoilers and
is meant to be read by someone who has seen the film. I won't go
into detail about the story, just facets of the script and what I
thought worked and didn't.

The story, I will have to stay is very
solid for the most part. Nolan does want to say a lot and show us a
lot for the 3 hours of the film and he barely had time to do it all.
We have many skips in the story and leaps in the script that seem to
gloss over some of the issues with the dying Earth. Certainly it is
all there on screen for the viewer to process and as with most of
Nolan's films, he reveals the background throughout the story. We
know Earth is dying and we know farms are failing and learn more
about this problem as the movie goes on. Not knowing some of the
details to start with gives at least this viewer some moments where I
felt Cooper (Matthew McConaughy) jumped to go on the mission a bit
suddenly.

Cut scene from the movie

The emotional continuity was not as strong as some other
moments but this is a sacrifice Nolan made to reveal the story as he
did. Rather than make the movie 6 hours long, we gather just enough
story from before the launch to set the stage for what the mission is
for and the emotional drive that all the characters have to complete
plan A or B. By the end of the film, all motivations for the
characters come together and makes sense – for the most part –
see below for a possible exception. This material might have been
better as a mini series or perhaps a series of movies but Nolan does
his best in compressing the ideas into the script and at times this
feels overloaded. The film does change pace in order for the viewer
to experience the drama unfolding among the relationships and he made
the right choice to push many of these moments toward the middle and
end of the film rather than the start so as to not bore the audience.

I think the emotional structure for the
first hour is just enough to allow the story to develop from there
and we see how important the mission is, how devastated the crew are
when learning that plan A was never on the cards and how powerful
love is (ah, that plot device we will talk about later).

In my opinion the story is flawless
apart from what I mentioned above up until Brand's sudden reveal that
she is in love with Edmunds, one of the other astronauts who left
Earth 10 years earlier to explore his particular planet. This might
be one of the hardest pills to swallow in the movie. First off, this
revelation comes out of left field but does allow for the dilemma of
personal decisions clouding the minds of our crew. Cooper has a
promise to keep for his daughter, Murphy and his goal is to save the
people of Earth. He wants plan A to succeed. Brand wants either
mission to succeed but has the alternative agenda of reuniting with
Edmunds. Dr. Mann is all about plan B as is Brand's father played my
Michael Caine. These opposing motives clash in a big way and create
tension and tough decisions for the characters.

The 'love' idea stems from this as it
is a driving force for these characters and in the end Cooper seems
to feel, as does the writers, that love is what will ultimately give
Cooper the power to communicate with his daughter and save their
world. This is perhaps a roll your eyes moment in the film but if
you can look at the science behind the story, the 'love saves all'
theme is not as annoying.

The movie does certainly open things
for discussion and right off the bat, if a film does this then it is better for it. The concept that Cooper can communicate with his
daughter might another hard part to accept but it was obvious that
the scenes with the 'ghost' were what was going on from the first
moments in the film. Since in a black hole every moment is connected
to every other moment, Cooper is able to communicate at different
times with his daughter, ultimately giving her the knowledge to save
the people of Earth. That, in of itself makes sense. He is not
traveling back in time per say, he just exists in all times. He is
not able to interact directly with all these points other than brief
touches and so can only push the books and move the dust to send his
signals. He is also able to 'shake hands' with Brand we originally
saw when they entered the worm hole. One can look at the TV series Quantum Leap and see a similar idea where Sam Beckett is basically in touch with many moments within his life span. If you can buy this, you can buy Interstellar. It is basically the same concept just realized differently.

The ability for Cooper to enter this
singularity and reach out to his daughter is certainly far fetched
and so perhaps this is where 'love' enters the equation. Perhaps
love is part of the universe and is more than just an emotion. It
may be an tangible connection among people as Brand suggests.
Certainly this would give Cooper the connection with the important
periods of Murph's life to send those communications. It may be hard
for some viewers who are all in on the science and science fiction to
suddenly accept this unexplainable 'love' element but I see nothing
in the film to completely reject this.

The space exploration plot is
incredible and the effects, action and especially with IMAX to
practically blow me out of my seat, was impressive on every level.
The film could have just been about that and I would have been fine
(more on the long ending in a minute – my review is just as long!)
It is interesting to note that Nolan went out of his way to deliver a
space exploration film that centers so little on the actual craft
they are using to explore. Rarely do you see the space craft. You
only see close-ups of the launch and mostly close-up of the craft.
It is not until later do you actually get a good look at the craft.
Not sure what the purpose was for this. It was not an important part
of the story. The craft were just background and by the time the
landings occur on the various planets, we do see more of the smaller
crafts in action.

The realism and spectacular look of
this part of the film, including the trip into the black hole harken
back to 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as Contact. They
are highlights for sure.

The family drama may not be everyone's
cup of tea but is handled well in my opinion. There is plenty of it
to go around and might have improved a bit being cut back a little.
You do not want to lose the desperate situation on Earth nor the
passage of time as well as the relationship between Cooper and his
daughter but it did help make the movie longer.

The black hole part of the film takes
us into a different realm entirely for the film. We go from a fairly
accurate science plot to the surreal and weird, just as 2001
and Contact did before. A black hole, in a story, can be an
easy out for writers. Once you have a black hole you can basically
do anything. Dancing clowns riding chipmunks could happen because
there is a black hole. Interstellar keeps the idea of the
black hole fairly grounded. Compared to the rest of the film the
imagery is out there and hard to grasp but the idea of being able to
touch all parts of your life, as mentioned above is not completely
ridiculous. Even Neil deGrasse Tyson finds the idea scientifically
possible!

Now, the film, for me takes a few new
spins toward the end that I feel could have been done differently.
After communicating with his daughter successfully, Cooper's 'quantum
world' collapses and he is found drifting in space a short while
later near Saturn. Somehow he is returned to our solar system but
years into the future. That singularity meant that all times and
places are touched and toward the end he seemed to be backtracking
his time line from the mission (therefore touching Brand in the ship)
and now back near Saturn. He is able to see that his information
gathered from the black hole and given to his daughter, enabled
mankind to leave the dying Earth and build a giant space station
world. While this new reveal of the actual plan A is important to
the viewer, it may have not been needed. Cooper is now happy and
re-united with his daughter who is very old and on her death bed.
Cooper then leaves the solar system to go find Brand, who is all
alone on Edmonds's world but with the frozen embryos of the human
race. Again, a convenient ending and thankfully we did not see this
re-union more it is implied. I think if anything could have been
excised from the movie, this could have been it.

The viewers seeing
the outcome of Cooper's info for his daughter and the daughter
sending one last message to her father telling him mankind was saved
might have been a better and potentially shorter and logical ending.
The stretching of the plot to allow him to make it back and then to
leave again was a bit jarring to me and was not the strongest ending.
It reminded me of another shout out to the 2001: A Space Odyssey
universe specifically the book, 3001, The Final Odyssey.

I will make one mention of the poor sound mix. The film is not playing properly in many theaters. The mix may prevent you from clearly hearing some scenes with over loud music and fainter dialog. For the most part you can get the gist but there is at least one major moment where the audience all turned to one another and asked "What did he say?"

High expectations were matched and
excelled to a great degree. I would have to see this film again to
really get an idea about how good of a film it really is. I
certainly place this film right up there with Inception, The
Dark Knight and Memento as Christopher Nolan's best films.
I felt the film tried to do too much in the same way that The Dark
Knight did with a drawn out ending with Harvey Dent. The Joker
was the strength of that film and once he was out of the way, the
film petered out to a degree. Interstellar did this in a
similar fashion with the return to Saturn but this was not enough to
degrade the quality of this film that much.

I feel the film may be too much sci-fi
for the general audiences although I am sure there are sci-fi fans
who find the film to full of itself and grand. I love films like
this and with that mixture of drama and emotion it made it that much
better. It is hard to grasp all the concepts for sure and we can
debate it all we want but the Universe is a place we know little
about and Interstellar can easily fit into that concept. The film
has everything it needs to tell the tale and warrant multiple
viewings. I would not be surprised to see this film creep up into my
top 20 sci-fi films of all time. Time will tell.

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